CTS 129: 5G Technology

Recorded at Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, Florida. We speak to Mike Geller and Pramod Nair about 5G technology and what Wi-Fi professionals would know about.

5G Technology

We’ve been hearing a lot about 5G lately. But do many of you what is involved with 5G? We just know it’s the next number up from 4G 😉

We recorded an episode with Mike Geller and Pramod Nair, Cisco employees, at the Podcast Domain in Cisco Live Orlando, Florida. There’s some background noise from the attendees at Cisco Live but you’ll still be able to hear the conversation.

As Wi-Fi professionals, what should we know about 5G? What is it all about? Hopefully, Mike and Pramod can shed some light on this topic for us.

First thing to know, is 5G caters to a set of use cases. Pramod points out this is the first time we’ve seen something driven by use cases. Some of those use cases for 5G are low latency for IoT and fixed wireless access. There’s the vehicle to everything use case. It can include Wi-Fi transmission but doesn’t define what RF interface to use, regulated or not.

What we do know, spectrum is always going to be a scarce, finite, resource. There is a possibility to use Wi-Fi and LTE together. Possibly use Wi-Fi on specific IoT use cases so we can better use spectrum more efficiently.

More importantly, we will not see 5G replace Wi-Fi. Mike Geller and Pramod Nair do not consider them as competing technologies.

Wi-Fi has been there yesterday, Wi-Fi is there today, Wi-Fi will be there tomorrow. – Pramod Nair

If you listen around the 10:50 minute mark, Pramod makes a funny statement.

The differentiator in 5G is the network has the capability to tell the device which slice of network resources it should follow. There can be a radio interface to cover your phone, your friends phone, and another phone. Each phone can have a different profile because of data packages. You can put any of those phones on a different slice all together. Here, it just becomes more flexible. The network is becoming more complex but the use case is becoming easier.

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About the Author

Rowell, CWNE #210, is a network engineer in Higher-Ed. He enjoys working with wireless networking technologies and loves to share and engage with the community. You can connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.